What's the delay and getting a deal done?

After attending last night’s (9/24) West Chester School Board meeting as a concerned taxpayer, I came away with several observations. First and foremost, test scores in the district are up at every grade level making West Chester one of the top districts in the state! Administrators in the district are doing such a great job that even though the board can only afford to give them a 1.7 percent raise one board member would like to give them a 30 percent raise.

The West Chester Education Association held a rally outside before the meeting and attended the meeting to bring awareness that they are working without a contract and negotiations have stalled. It was quite obvious that several members of the board are working to try to break the teacher’s union. The vice president was admonished publicly by the board president for her letter to the DLN.

The board members are not negotiating with the teachers. The have hired a law firm at tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to negotiate for them. Adding third parties to any negotiation only bogs things down.

It is time for the taxpayers of the West Chester Area School District to get involved and tell the board to negotiate in good faith, get rid of the lawyers and make a deal. The teachers are performing at a high rate (check out the test scores), our schools are run well (see administration raises), and our taxes are the lowest in the county. Why can’t a deal be negotiated?

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ROBERT MULL

West Goshen

There’s no justification

The Pennsylvania Sunshine Law is designed to inform residents of decisions made by their governing bodies and the vote by the individual members of those bodies. But apparently this does not hold true in East Goshen Township.

At their meeting on Oct. 2, the East Goshen supervisors insisted that NO decisions have been made in regard to the fate of WEGO. And yet, in the next breath, we are told that an expert has been hired to evaluate the choices available to the township: maintain WEGO; disband WEGO and rely on state police; disband WEGO and reconstitute a new East Goshen force. The contract price for the expert was $65,000. This expert is not an employee of the township, therefore there is no justification for this decision by the supervisors and actual vote to have been hidden from the public. The Sunshine Law has been violated.

Given this fact, it becomes more difficult to believe this situation is an isolated incident. At this meeting, citizens in the audience hooted, howled and booed when the supervisors, headed by Chairman Isayeff, tried to assert no decisions have been made. The board has, by its actions, only increased the width of the chasm between the governed and the governing.

HOWARD A. JONES

West Chester

Gun ordinance questioned

On 9/24/12 Londonderry residents and a few nonresidents packed the township hall to standing room only. The draw was an attempt to pass a “shooting ordinance” that placed severe restrictions on the use of guns, archery, even BB guns within the township limits with rather drastic penalties of $1,000 and/or 90 days in jail for violations.

Supervisor Brown could not satisfactorily explain why this ordinance was needed, having received only two or three gunfire complaints in the last five years, and would not say who had initiated it. Also the township admittedly it had no way to enforce the ordinance if it had passed.

All those attending were very much against the ordinance and with charged emotion voiced that opinion. No one spoke in favor of it. In the end none of the supervisors made a motion to pass the ordinance so it died on the spot, to great applause by the attending residents.

Two items arise from this meeting that are important:

1. Public notification statues need to be changed to include modern methods. While the ordinance was legally advertised, it almost went unseen, and therefore unknown by most residents until one had time to stop and read the sign. Today, newspapers are being replaced by electronic media such as websites and e-mail, and these should also be used for public notification.

2. One person can make a difference, and a group of persons can make a bigger difference. Fight for your rights.